April

So far in the month of April, Carnegie Mellon Media Relations has counted hundreds of references to the university in worldwide publications. Here is a sample.

Where to go in the renewed Rust Belt | Details Magazine

April 2012 Issue

When artist Jon Rubin moved to Pittsburgh in 2006 to teach at Carnegie Mellon University, he decided to experiment with some of the local materials: cheap real estate and good people. "Midwestern culture values openness and community engagement," he observes. Three years ago, he rented a storefront in the city's emerging East Liberty district for $500 a month and opened Waffle Shop, a place where hip locals can enjoy breakfast fare at all hours while participating in Web-streamed talk shows covering topics from "Michael Jackson and Teabaggers" to "Dolphin Breeding in Appalachia." The following year Rubin and artist Dawn Weleski turned the space next door into Conflict Kitchen, whose rotating menu draws from countries that the U.S. government has a political beef with—like Iran or Venezuela—helping expand the community's culinary and cultural consciousness. As Rubin says: "We're creating the place where we want to live now."

New sat-nav vibrates the sides of your steering wheel to tell you where to go - and could save dozens of lives a year | Daily Mail

April 2

Researchers claim that using the new system leads to between three and four per cent fewer incidents of distracted driving because people will not have to look at their sat nav screen and take their eyes off the road.

That could mean dozens fewer road deaths each year.

The steering wheel has been developed by the AT&T Lab of Carnegie Mellon University - it uses 'haptics', the same 'tactile feedback' used for instance to deliver a tiny buzz when you touch a phone's touchscreen.

How stress works in the body, and how to avoid it | Hindustan Times

April 6

Long-term, chronic stress is just plain bad for your health, but a new study probes into the question of why. Researchers in the US found that stress reduces the body's ability to regulate inflammation, which in turn bumps your chances of getting sick.

"The immune system's ability to regulate inflammation predicts who will develop a cold, but more importantly it provides an explanation of how stress can promote disease," study researcher Sheldon Cohen, of Carnegie Mellon University, said in a statement released this week. "When under stress, cells of the immune system are unable to respond to hormonal control, and consequently, produce levels of inflammation that promote disease."

Seeking new ways to light a fire under coal | The Wall Street Journal

April 9

Those rules would require new power plants to emit less than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt hour—roughly half what most emit today. "The economic viability [for lowering carbon emissions] is just not there," said Paul Fischbeck, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, who has studied the cost of removing CO2 from power-plant emissions.

Last July, American Electric Power Co. AEP +0.03% put on hold a pilot program to capture emissions from a West Virginia plant because the company said it couldn't recover its costs by raising rates.

Inflation lurks as stealth tax on top of form 1040 | Bloomberg

April 11

Bernanke is a student of history, and right now the chapter on the Great Depression has more dog-eared pages than the one on 1970s stagflation. That’s too bad because there’s enough historical “evidence Bernanke could use to start exiting before inflation gets ahead of him,” says Marvin Goodfriend, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a former research director at the Richmond Fed.

EPA issues air pollution rules for fracking wells | USA Today

April 20

Along with a warm winter, the fracking boom has helped lead to a sharp drop in natural gas prices in the past six months, from about $4 per thousand cubic feet to around $2.

"The rules seem like a step in the right direction," said environmental engineer Allen Robinson of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. "Other pollutants need to be looked at, particularly ones associated with ozone."

Who made that pie chart? | The New York Times

April 20

Playfair’s graphic innovations went beyond the pie chart: he also invented the bar graph. Academics conduct studies about which Playfair invention performs better. Excel and PowerPoint may abound with pie charts, but not everyone is a fan. The data-visualization pioneer Edward Tufte wrote that “pie charts should never be used.” Dan Boyarski, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, encourages his students to expand their horizons. He also concedes, however, that in some cases, like illustrating a budget, the pie chart is fine. “We know what it stands for, so we immediately relate to it,” Boyarski said. “That’s the advantage of the tried and true.”

Soft robotics takes shape | Forbes.com

April 22

Literature and film have always planted ideas in our head, romanticized our images of what robots look like and what they do. The reality is that robotics have been in our lives for a while, with the first electronic autonomous robot introduced in 1948 they moved into industry, military, the home and now gaming, entertainment and increasingly healthcare and well-being. But there’s still a disconnect between what we see in the movies versus what is really happening in robotics.

Technology that supports the advancement of robotics is coming out of many of the research labs today including Harvard’s Whitesides Research Group, Italy’s Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and Carnegie Mellon’s Soft Machines Lab that are looking at inventive ways to create and apply robotic technology in our lives.

Bilingual robot introduced in Qatar | Aljazeera.com

April 24

Taking human and robot interaction to a new level, researchers at the University of Carnegie Mellon in Doha, Qatar's capital, have created a prototype of a bilingual robot that can effectively communicate with people.

The "roboreceptionist" at the university that can answer the phone, give directions to rooms on campus and even help provide people with information on the weather in both English and Arabic.